The rise of artificial intelligence will drive a surge in electricity demand that’ll initially be met by fossil fuels, before nuclear replaces that source, the head of a body advising Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings said.
As data centers are built in countries like the United States and Japan, more natural gas will be needed in the short term as power demand is "rising so fast that we will not have time to build nuclear plants initially,” Dale Klein, chairperson of the nuclear reform monitoring committee for Tepco said. Klein is also a former chairperson of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The rapid global adoption of AI has triggered a boom in demand for the energy-hungry data centers on which the technology depends, putting power grids to the test. While companies including Microsoft and Alphabet’s Google have invested in nuclear power to secure clean electricity for their facilities, that solution can’t be applied universally or immediately.
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